Elvis Presley Albums

In November 1955, Sam Phillips sold Elvis Presley's
contract to RCA Victor for $35,000, plus $5,000 in back royalties he owed
Elvis. It was the largest amount paid for a single performer up to that time. Steve
Sholes, RCA's premier A&R (artist and repertoire) man, had helped sign
Elvis to the label. Sholes oversaw the company's specialty singles, which
included country western, gospel, and R&B, so he served as the producer of
Elvis' first recordings for RCA.

A mix of rock 'n' roll and ballads, Elvis Presley reveals a talented young singer with a unique style exploring his musical tastes.

Moving to RCA was a major step in Elvis'
career and a major investment for the company; at the very least, it meant
going national and international in promotion and distribution. Sholes was aware
that the execs at RCA were closely watching their unusual new artist, who
didn't fit into any of the company's existing categories of music.

RCA rereleased Elvis' Sun singles in
December 1955 and then arranged for Elvis to begin recording new material in Nashville
the next month. Chet Atkins, RCA's head man in Nashville, organized the
sessions, which started on January10-11, 1956. Scotty Moore and Bill Black, who
had worked with Elvis on the road and at Sun from the beginning, accompanied
Elvis as usual. D.J. Fontana, who played with Elvis on tour, checked in as
Elvis' drummer, though he had never recorded with the trio before. Atkins
played rhythm guitar, Floyd Cramer was added at the piano, and gospel singers
Ben and Brock Speer of the Speer Family and Gordon Stoker of the Jordanaires
provided backing vocals.

The
detached, professional air at the RCA sessions was intimidating to Moore and Black,
who were used to the down-home atmosphere of Sun, while Sholes was unsure of
how to duplicate Elvis' Sun sound. Stoker was unhappy because the rest of the
Jordanaires had not been asked to join the session. In fact, everyone was nervous
or unsettled except Elvis, who attacked his first number, Ray Charles' "I
Got a Woman," with everything he had.

In effect, Elvis performed the song
while he recorded it, which so impressed the typically cool Atkins that he
called his wife to come down to the studio because "it was just so damn exciting."
Elvis went on to record "Heartbreak Hotel” and "Money Honey"
that day. The RCA engineers approximated the Sun Studio's echo effect for
"Heartbreak Hotel" by the creative placement of a speaker and a mike.
The following day, Elvis recorded two ballads that Sholes had found for him,
"I'm Counting on You" and "I Was the One."

Sholes was
disconcerted by Elvis' off-handed, instinctual approach to recording, in which
he sang a take, played it back, discarded it, and then sang another, repeating
the process until he felt he had captured the tune. Elvis did not read music,
nor did he have any professional experience at arranging it. He just
instinctively knew what to do and when. RCA executives in New York were also
troubled with the Nashville session. The recordings did not sound as much like
Elvis' Sun records as they had wanted, and the two ballads were unlike anything
Elvis had released before.

A second
recording session was arranged in New York, in which Elvis covered Cad Perkins'
"Blue Suede Shoes" and Little Richard's "Tutti Frutti." This
time only piano player Shorty Long was used in addition to Scotty, Bill, and
D.J., and the focus was on explosive rock 'n' roll numbers. Seven tracks from
the Nashville and New York sessions were chosen for Elvis' first long-playing
album, Elvis Presley. These were combined with five songs previously recorded
at Sun but never released. Interestingly, "Heartbreak Hotel" was not included
on the first album.

Sholes and
RCA need not have worried about their new charge. Released on March
13, 1956,
Elvis Presley sold over 360,000 copies by the end of April. At $3.98 per album,
this made it RCA's first million-dollar album by a single artist. Elvis Presley
also became the first album in music history to sell over a million copies. It
reached number one on Billboard's Top LPs chart, remaining there for ten weeks,
and it launched a record five extended-play albums.

Critics
have long struggled over whether Elvis' music began to go downhill after he
left the innovative guidance of Sam Phillips for the mainstream glory of RCA.
Detractors point to the ballads on his first album as evidence of his move
toward pop music and away from the groundbreaking rockabilly of Sun. However,
Elvis had just turned 21 when he began recording for RCA, and as a young
artist, he was still developing his style.

Elvis did not write music or compose
lyrics. Rather, his talent was the uncanny ability to fuse diverse influences,
ranging from the pop ballads of Dean Martin to the R&B of Arthur Crudup,
into a unique sound that became polished rock 'n' roll at RCA. Elvis Presley,
with its combination of ballads, rock 'n' roll covers, and unreleased Sun recordings,
reveals a young singer developing his musical expression. Likewise, Elvis' second album reflected his variety of musical interests. To learn more about Elvis, see the next section.